The final issue of "All Star Western: Jonah Hex" No. 36 (DC, $3.99) came out this week and I could not have asked for a better end to my favorite western hero.

Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti did a wonderful job closing all the loops, winding up the loose ends and settling apparent contradictions in the long and strange life of Jonah Hex.

I can't say much more about the ending without spoiling the surprises, but old-time Hex fans will think it as sweet as sarsaparilla.

I would have preferred a more gritty artist than Darwyn Cooke, but he did a nice job.

A lot of very good history has been destroyed as part of DC's "New 52" reboot and for a while I feared that Jonah was going to suffer for it. For many months, he was hanging his cowboy hat in 1800s Gotham City, which always felt way too forced. For a while, he was even in modern day Gotham where he met Batman, which really felt like it was off the rails.

But Gray and Palmiotti always had a good feel for our hard-working anti-hero and they finally sent him back to his own time, better than ever.

Writers get attached to their characters and I think that Gray and Palmiotti wanted to end Hex's series with the character being happy – something Hex saw little over in his long career. I've bought and read every single comic Jonah has ever appeared in, yes even the weird ones when he was in a dystopian future where he was a "Mad Max" character.

If you never read Jonah Hex, please don't judge him by that horrible movie that was (very) loosely based on the comics.

Go out and buy the "Showcase" Jonah Hex trades to see why fans will miss him so much.

The real Hex was a scarred, tortured gunslinger who really only wanted to be accepted. We thought we saw how he finally ended up in a brutal story set in modern day, but the new ending of the series puts that in a very different perspective.

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